Lila’s Apartment Building on Dexter

A few months ago, my fiancé and I started watching the Showtime television series Dexter and I have to say that it didn’t take very long for the two of us to become completely and totally obsessed with it. So, as I’m sure you can probably imagine, I’ve also become pretty obsessed lately with the Seeing Stars website page that catalogs the many filming locations featured on the show. In fact, I can’t even watch an episode of Dexter now without having my laptop next to me and open to the site! LOL Anyway, after my fiancé and I had finished watching the series’ second season, I was absolutely dying to stalk the apartment building belonging to Dexter’s psychopathic girlfriend Lila Tournay on the show. And, while I actually could NOT stand the character of Lila, I absolutely loved her loft-style apartment, which is one of the main reasons I wanted to stalk it. But that’s not actually the whole story. The biggest reason that I wanted to stalk it is that it was actually thanks to Lila’s building that fellow stalker Chas was able to locate the Girls Just Want to Have Fun apartment for me. Apparently, Gary from Seeing Stars was having a hard time tracking down Lila’s building, so he enlisted the help of master stalker Chas in his hunt. And while Lila’s building and the GJWTHF building don’t look all that much alike, they do both have central courtyards and are both made out of brick. So, during his search for Gary, Chas came across the GJWTHF apartment and took a close look at it. And, while he quickly realized that it wasn’t the Dexter building, he remembered it later when I mentioned my GJWTHF quest. And the rest, as they say, is history! If it hadn’t been for Dexter, it’s quite possible Chas never would have found the GJWTHF apartment, and because of that, Lila’s building will always hold a VERY special place in my heart.

The exterior of Lila’s apartment building was shown repeatedly throughout Dexter’s second season, beginning with the episode entitled “Dex, Lies, and Videotape”, and I am very happy to report that it looks exactly the same in person as it did on the show. Well, sort of!

As it turns out, the view of the building shown on Dexter is not actually the view of the building that is visible from the street. The view featured on the show is actually the building’s side entrance, which can only be reached via a gated parking lot located just East of the complex. You can compare the view shown on Dexter to the street view of the building in the screen capture and photograph pictured above. As you can see, they look nothing alike.

But if you go around to the East side of the building, you’ll see the entrance that was shown on Dexter, looking much the same as it did in the series.

Sadly, though, that entrance is located behind a locked gate and is not accessible to the public. But as it turns out, when Chas stalked the building back in February of this year, the stalking gods were smiling down on him because he was actually invited onto the property! As fate would have it, when Chas first showed up to stalk Lila’s place, a gentleman happened to be outside painting the gate and when he noticed Chas snapping photographs, he, of course, asked why. When Chas explained that the building was featured on Dexter, a show which the painter had never heard of LOL, he opened the gate and allowed Chas to step inside to get some better photographs. YAY! You can see Chas’ pictures here.

And while the interior of Lila’s apartment was actually filmed on a soundstage at Sunset Gower Studios and not at this location, as you can see in the sign pictured above, the building is actually made up of loft-style apartments just like Lila’s.

Big THANK YOU to Chas for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Lila’s apartment building from the television series Dexter is located at 6201 Yucca Street in Hollywood.

This building was also used in 2001 Jon Favreau movie called, MADE. Its where the Bobby character (played by Jon) and his girlfriend lived. Back then, there was no gate across the cul-de-sac. MADE was not seen by many people but its one of the funniest movies I’ve seen. Great chemistry between Jon Favreau and Vince Vaughn and the scene with Peter Falk is classic.